


table for one

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Comfort Food, Food, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Memorials, Post-Canon, Survivor Guilt, Zine, Zine: For Hearth and Home (Final Fantasy XV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 21:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21186545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: He survived to see the new dawn, and he survived to -- be able to cook again, and to be able to share the food of his younger days with newer people and newer friends.But in the nights, Libertus Ostium is only able to make food to share with ghosts.





	table for one

**Author's Note:**

> My Libertus-centric piece that was published in [_For Hearth and Home_](http://kingsglaivezine.tumblr.com/), the FFXV Kingsglaive zine! Two things about this zine: take lots of tissues as this is heavy on the emotions, and also -- do NOT read this on an empty stomach!
> 
> (Let me know if you want notes on the dish that Libertus cooks :D)

The door closes with a click behind him: echoes, and the gloom of his kitchen. Familiar even in the darkness: the gray-flecked tile. The slow soft drip of water from the tap. Shadow-shapes of pots and pans, of the block of scratched and scarred wood that hunches next to the sink. The curves in space of knife-handles, and if he squints, he could almost convince himself he’s not looking at kitchen tools.

Cutting edges, different teeth: serrated and beveled and -- oh, what do those words even mean? Why would they even matter, when he’s really thinking of -- weapon-edges. Glaive-edges.

Which thought leads him inexorably into -- silver embellishments on black, framing smiles and all kinds of mocking laughter. 

Their beloved faces.

Until his phone rings, tin-whistle shriek from his pocket, and the thought unravels, and he is alone, and he’s only turning his lights on.

Hand wrapped in a kitchen towel, and he pulls the thin brick of noise out -- hits Answer, and the voice is automated and low and it brings him comforting news. 

_Safe night. All safe. All’s well._

He’s still subscribed to that nightly alert, and maybe it’s something he wants to cling to, like all the other things: the old coat that hangs in a corner of his closet; the old weapons which he still hones on waking, on stones he’s set aside for the purpose; and a scant handful of photographs with their torn corners. 

And there are bits of him that he literally can’t undo now, or cut away now. The ink in his skin, in the little code-shapes, the message-lines. His braids and their multiplication of silver strands, and the beads he wears. Knotting twisting veins on his gnarled hands, the dark blue cast of them and the fresh new red-and-brown scabs.

Just because the nights are safe doesn’t mean he’s stepped away from the fighting. The nightmares have only changed forms. Feral animals trying to make prey once again of the human beings huddled in their blazing outposts. Feral men and women, too. The lingering ghosts of that long, long night. 

Maybe someone in the Citadel will find something to do with the report he’s sent over, about the smaller lakes in Leide. Water is vital, and securing it is still a priority, for the Amicitias, for Argentum.

That’s job-thinking and he needs to set it aside, and he’s grateful for cool water, for washing his hands -- and after, he bends to the tap and drinks, before setting his phone aside, and picking up a fresh towel to tuck into his pocket, corners hanging out for easy access.

Time to address -- dinner, and he’s not the only one working on that. The windows are open to the smells of -- fires being lit, above and below. The scents of meat, bread, noodles, soup. Fruits and vegetables as they’re sliced or peeled or broken. Spices and salt and the fiery wince of hot peppers. 

Newspapers like a thin layer of skin, protective, over the meat for this night’s meal. 

Safe, here, where he chooses the biggest and sharpest of his kitchen knives: and as he works the blade it’s not himself that he sees in the hazy reflections, in the nearest window. Wavy hair in dark strands reflected in a cleaver-sized blade. The easy sweet mockery of a smile, sharp as a killing joke.

That never was him, he thinks.

Knife and not a smile that separates the flesh easily from the bones. Here is the meat, dressed and portioned. The bones he wraps in fresh paper, and sets aside. Ingredients for another day.

Clicking impact of glass jars big and small; he lines them up like sentries. Eyes them warily, because it’s an inspection as much as it is trying to find what he actually needs. Black seed-shapes, and broad dried leaves in their brittle gray-greens; the bottle of red-brown sauce and its scent of fermentation, and the bottle of mist-white vinegar that bubbles from a thin rounded shape of acid-mother.

What does he need? What is he missing?

Other than -- the voices that used to surround him, to pester him, to annoy him. Off-key singing and the crash of cards shuffled and cut and dealt. And sometimes those voices went quiet and worried and hard all at once and then the kitchen table would be reshaped into a map: salt and pepper shakers that were sentries and scouts, forks and glasses and bottle-caps that were outposts, seeds of someone’s fruit that were the enemy forces.

Glance over his shoulder as he strips herbs from their stems and stalks, as he crushes and peels and the kitchen fills with pungent scents, and that table now is -- empty, except for the long-reaching shadows. 

“Sorry, man,” layers of whispers in the corners, and the maps fade away. In their wake the table fills with sweet-scented ghosts, because the others would pick flowers for him, from theoretically forbidden gardens -- sort of as a return for some dinner or another, and sort of as a gift. All kinds of reasons, all kinds of excuses.

It’s almost enough to make him smile as he turns on the stove. A pot of water; a few drops of oil in a shallow pan. Tongs to turn the meat with, and the sear developing along the sides. 

“Just a taste, come on!” The missing begging and wheedling -- can’t they wait? Couldn’t they? The food will be ready soon enough -- he’s making it ready, he’s making it for them. Always the attempt to steal a bite before it’s all plated out, the dishes ready to be filled and then to be polished clean. Every crumb eaten, whether in deep thought or in celebration or in grim mechanical refueling. 

He’d always tried to crush the little bits of pride that had risen up in him, then. 

Resting the meat before the next step in the process. Shimmer of warming water, and the slow long count to the boil. He cleans up after himself while he’s waiting, and pours the sauce and the vinegar out into waiting bowls, eyeballing -- and he knows of exactly one person who can do that with -- the rest of his body, his hands and his other senses, measuring without measuring precisely.

Recipes in his head, and most of them are his, or he’s taken them from Galahd and elsewhere and made them his own -- and after all this time he can still vividly remember all the others and all their variations. All the ways they’d made this dish, all the large and small differences. A different set of flavorings: sugar, perhaps, or hot peppers. The same dish, but a different kind of meat -- once or twice, the rare delicacy of almost home-flavored fish -- or the substitution of vegetables for meat. 

All the different people who’ve cooked in this kitchen, next to him -- except for those days when they insisted on cooking _for_ him, or for each other. All the arguments back and forth and the instant cease-fire of the food when it was ready, no matter what kind of hostilities had been taking place. The occasional cold shock of silence, in the wake of a broken plate, in the wake of a shattered glass (and then the flowers would arrive in short order, always).

A present of new knives.

The knives are antiques now, he supposes. The one he’d used for the meat; the others waiting for their own uses. He’s lost maybe one or two of them over the many years. And knives break, too -- the handles split and become even more dangerous than the sharp edges and so -- he’s had to let them go.

At least knives can be replaced: plates, cutlery, pots, even the stove itself.

All of those can be replaced and the kitchen can be made new again; but he’ll never sit down to another meal with -- the people who’d once crowded around this table with him, who’d made all kinds of jokes about ranks and missions and the pain of being so far away from home. 

Home, here, copied: the food that he’d made and remembered and tried to recreate. The occasional bottle of almost-right moonshine. The clinging need for each other’s company. 

Home that he’d had, here, among his people. Home and the taste of shared meals.

He isn’t sobbing, he tells himself as he sticks a fork into the meat and finds it almost done. Not his tears in the bowls of sauce and vinegar and spices, that he pours into the pot and mixes and then he turns the flame down to let it all meld. 

Once it had been an ordeal, and a treat, to fill half a dozen souls with warmth and food and a stolen moment of plenty, like filled chairs around a filled table.

Solitary meals are all that’s left to him now, all that’s left of them, in the cramped empty spaces.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to the people who read this over, and gave me so many suggestions for improvement and emotional impact: Akumeoi, stopmopingstarthoping, notavodkashot, and our zine mod Digi.
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) \-- or, hey, if Tumblr becomes too rotten and we can't talk there any more, there's always Twitter, where I am @ninemoons42.


End file.
